Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not give in to the demands of the Yesh Atid and the Jewish Home factions — even if it means holding new elections, sources within his Likud-Beytenu faction said in a media report published Monday.
Several rounds of talks with representatives from Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party and Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party have failed to reach an agreement for either party to join the coalition because, reportedly, neither is prepared to give up on the core principles of its platform.
“Bennett better not tug too hard on the rope because it will snap,” a Likud-Beytenu source said, according to the Maariv report. “Netanyahu is prepared to go to elections; the important thing is to not give in to the pact that [Bennett] has with Lapid.”
The comments came hours after Yesh Atid and Jewish Home formally notified Likud-Beytenu that they had formed an alliance in which the two parties will either join the government together or join the opposition. Both parties are intent on legislating the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Israelis into military or national service.
The Likud-Beytenu strategy until now has focused on prying the two parties apart, specifically the right-wing Jewish Home, which is considered a more natural ally for Likud-Beytenu.
It’s not clear if Netanyahu would actually be willing to go through with another round of elections after his joint faction performed well below expectations last month. However, should he fail to garner the necessary 61 seats for a unity government, he may be forced to call a new vote in any case.
“Netanyahu is threatening with an empty gun,” a senior source in Jewish Home told the paper. “If we went to the vote today Likud would get 12 seats because the public will punish him for not forming the most natural government — with us — which is what the government should have been right from the start. Instead of doing the simple thing, the Likud is getting caught up in endless spin.”
Both Yesh Atid and Jewish Home have made it clear they would not budge from their demand to legislate national draft laws while the ultra-Orthodox parties, which historically are Netanyahu’s coalition partners, are staunchly opposed to the plan.
Yet without one of Jewish Home or Yesh Atid, it will be nearly impossible for Netanyahu to get the necessary seats to form a government.
According to the sources quoted in the report, Netanyahu, who has repeatedly spoken of forming a wide coalition, is equally determined to keep the ultra-Orthodox parties in the government, which may preclude Yesh Atid’s and Jewish Home’s participation.
As the stand-off drags on, Likud has taken an increasingly belligerent attitude toward Jewish Home and its party leader.
According to the report, the Likud party has in the last few days been distributing memos to its MKs that criticize the Lapid-Bennett alliance and lambaste Bennett in particular for critically damaging the right-wing, motivated, it claims, by self-interest.
Other Likud-Beytenu sources said that, in their opinion, Bennett will have a hard time explaining to his voters why he failed to join what could have been a strong right-wing government.
“How will his voters deal with the fact that re-elections were held just because he didn’t agree to close a deal on the coalition,” a source asked. “Let’s see Bennett explain to his voters that a right-wing government wasn’t formed because he didn’t want the Haredi parties in it. We will prove to the public that Jewish Home is not a center-right party but rather center-left.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is furious at what he believes is a conspiracy by Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and Bayit Yehudi chairman Naftali Bennett to try to prevent Shas and United Torah Judaism from joining the coalition, Likud sources said on Sunday.
Sources who attended Netanyahu’s meeting with Likud ministers said he spoke of Lapid and Bennett with contempt, complaining that “their strategy is not to reach solutions on key issues, only to push out the haredi parties.”
Ministers quoted Netanyahu as saying that Lapid and Bennett cared only about advancing themselves politically rather than the good of the country.
Channel 2 reported that Netanyahu intended to build a coalition with the 57 MKs of Likud Beytenu, Shas, UTJ, The Tzipi Livni Party and Kadima, and then give Bennett a choice between joining the coalition without Lapid or initiating an election in which the Left could come to power.
Bayit Yehudi MKs blasted Netanyahu for seeking to build a coalition with Labor and The Tzipi Livni Party and for suggesting that Bayit Yehudi was violating the will of its voters by making a deal with Lapid.
The Likud responded that Netanyahu was seeking to build a coalition with his party’s natural partners on the Right and then widen it to parties on the Center-Left.
“We aren’t tricking anyone,” a Likud official said. “Bennett is mistakenly trying to stop a right-wing government from being formed. He made a mistake by falling in love with Lapid, who is only using him.”
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It is now quite likely the new pope could be elected on St. Patrick's Day, March 17th.
Usually, the conclave begins 15 to 20 days after the death of The Pope, says National Review blogger Michael Potemra. In this case the 15-to-20 day clock will start running on Pope Benedict XVI's resignation day, February 28, which means the election will likely begin between March 15 and March 20.
Vatican sources have said it could possibly start before that but no final decision has been taken.
If the Vatican sticks to the old timetable, Potemra figures that the day of election will fall on March 17. He writes that "the usual minimum 15 days, plus the unusual extra 17 days of advance notice, means that they will start on the early side of the 15-to-20-day window: March 15. One ballot on Friday, March 15, followed by four on Saturday, March 16, and four on every successive day until a Pope is elected.
Ali Shirazi, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative in the Revolutionary Guard, said that Israel will soon pay for Hassan Shateri's assassination, Fox News reported.
Shateri, a high ranking official in the Revolutionary Guard, was killed this week in Lebanon in uncertain circumstances. Shirazi vowed to take revenge on Israel, accusing "Israeli mercenaries" for Shateri's death.
We believe the world is headed for substantial monetary chaos that will give rise to some sort of elite-backed global currency. In the meantime, the elites will pursue business-as-usual, which means they will need a new continent on which to lay off debt.
The dollar reserve system allows the top elites that run central banking to print virtually as much money as they want, provided they can find another country to hold debt. Japan was willing to purchase debt in the 1980s so that its consumer goods could be sold in the West. The Chinese played the same game in the 1990s and 2000s.
But now both of those countries hold an aggregate of well over two trillion dollars of US debt and a new entity must be found. Enter Africa.
The elites will likely build up Africa's economy with phony monetary stimulation while prevailing on African leaders to buy US debt, in particular. If Africa is "consolidated" via an African Union, this effort will be made more convenient and efficient.
So from our perspective, these are the operative forces at work in Africa: The continent is to be Islamified so as to pose as a faux-enemy of the West. At the same time, it is to be unified so that it can act as a single, mighty continent doing the bidding of top Western elites.
Finally, it is to be brought into the "modern era" via enormous money printing that will see African leaders begin to buy Western debt aggressively.
The corollary to the purchase of Western debt is that Africa itself must begin to produce the meaningless consumer trinkets of the sort that China and Japan sold to the West during their respective "miracles."
The end result will be a centralized but shattered economy and a mythology that "capitalism" brought Africa into the 21st century. This is the same mythology that has been spread about China and Japan. It is not true, however. Japan and China enjoyed the stimulative benefits of central banking super-money that created a simulation of prosperity without its reality.
Conclusion: The paradigm that Counterpunch offers us, one of neo-colonialism and exploitation, is partially true but avoids explaining the full impact of elite machinations, worldwide, as well as the elite goal which is from what we can tell ever-expanding world government. Such a paradigm does not adequately contribute to our understanding and may even mislead us.
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